13 
/ 
the perpetual ice^, is the termination of organic 
life. 
However stupendous the height ofChimborazo, 
its summit is four hundred metres lower than the 
point, at which M. Gay-Lussac, in his memo- 
rable aerial excursion, made experiments so im- 
portant both to meteorology and the knowledge 
of the laws of magnetism. Tlie natives of the 
province of Quito preserve a tradition, according 
to which a summit of the eastern ridge of the 
Andes, now called the Altar {el Altar) ^ part of 
which fell down in the fifteenth century, was 
formerly loftier than Chimborazo. In Boutan, 
the highest mountain of which English travellers 
have given us the measure, the Soumounang is 
only 44 1,9 metres (2268 toises) high : but, ac- 
cording to the assertion of Colonel Crawford 
the loftiest summit of the Cordilleras of Thibet 
is above twenty-five thousand English feet, or 
7617 metres (3909 toises). If this calculation 
be founded on an accurate measurement, a moun- 
tain of central Asia is a thousand and ninety me- 
tres higher than Chimborazo. To the eye of the 
real geologist, who, engaged in the study of 
the formations has been accustomed to contem- 
plate nature in all her greatness, the absolute 
height of mountains is an object of little impor- 
tance ; nor will he be astonished, if hereafter, in 
* Jameson’s System of Mineralogy, vol. 3, p, 329. 
